Never Part
by goolcaptain
Summary: Drusilla vamps Joyce who captures and enslaves Buffy and Dawn. But the love between the Summer's girls is far stronger than mere death Extreme angsthurtcomfort but always a happy ending


Originally published this as M but that means it doesn't get put on Just In or archived so I've toned down the violence and republished as T

Summary; a response to a request on which (and combined with the end of Angel) has prompted me to temporarily come out of retirement.  
Rating; NC-17. Buffy/Dawn torture  
Disclaimer; all to Joss, none to me  
Timeline; season 5  
Feedback; Part

She looked at her reflection in the mirror. She cast it against the wall smashing it into a thousand pieces.

"Be in me. Believe in me" Drusilla's thrall echoed around Joyce's brain, warm, comforting, overpowering. She tried once more to close the door on her.  
"Invite me in mummy?" Dru asked.  
Joyce gave in. She nodded slavishly and gestured for Drusilla to enter.

"You're dead!" Buffy screamed pinning Drusilla to the wall and raising her stake with her other hand. Drusilla didn't even look at her, instead looking past her, over her shoulder. Buffy couldn't help but follow her gaze.  
Joyce stood there, still in her normal clothes but the bitemarks readily visible around her neck, the collar of her blouse stained with blood. She shed her demon face and held out her arms to Buffy.  
Buffy's stake was at her heart as Joyce embraced her but she could not use it, dropping it uselessly to one side.  
"Oh god mom, no, not you, not you…" she whimpered. As the pain of Joyce's fangs entering her neck lanced through her senses she prayed for death to release her from the agony of her failure. "It's ok" she told herself, "It's only mom, it's only mom, she won't hurt me, she loves me"

"LEAVE HER ALONE!" Buffy screamed tearing Xander and Giles off Joyce as they prepared to stake her. She seized Drusilla by the arm and dragged her clear, ignoring the holy water that Tara was splashing over a shrieking Dru. The trio disappeared into the night as the Scoobies gathered themselves together.  
"Well that went BRILLIANTLY!" Xander observed acidly. For once Giles was lost for words.  
"Where's Dawn?" Willow asked suddenly.

Buffy stood in the corner of the factory, guarding the entrance throughout the day. It would have been a simple matter for her walk out and leave but the barrier preventing her was greater than any door of metal and wood.  
A hand took her arm. She looked up in alarm.  
"Buffy" Dawn pleaded "Come with me! Please!"  
Buffy hugged her, hugged her desperately. "Dawnie, no, you have to get out of here, you have to go now!"  
"Come with me!"  
"No, I can't leave, I can't go. I can't leave her, it's my fault this happened, I can't leave her, she's still my mother, I have to protect her. But you've got to go, you've got to go before they find you…"  
Dawn shook her head. "No, if you're staying so am I"  
"Dawn you don't understand" Buffy turned around and pulled up her top, revealing the dreadful lash marks that Joyce's cat-o-nine tails had made on her skin of her back. Dawn winced at the sight, Buffy turning around and taking her hands.  
"You see why you have to go. Mom's changed Dawnie. She does things to me, things much worse than this, does it for fun. That's why she didn't kill me. She wants to torture me"  
"No" Dawn decided. "I don't care, I really don't. I'm staying. At least we'll be together, at least we'll be a family once again"  
"Dawn, go now!" Buffy pleaded.  
Joyce materialized out of the gloom snatching Dawn up by the neck, holding her off the ground, Dawn's legs flailing helplessly in the air, choking.  
"Well, well" she observed. "A little take out snack"  
Buffy stared down at her shoes and wept

"All out attack!" Xander ventured. "We ask the Fang Gang for help, we call the Council, the Initiative, hell, see if we can get Faith out of prison?"  
"Maybe not" Willow ventured "Maybe we're looking at this the wrong way?"

Joyce took out her whip. "On your knee's girls" she instructed.  
The obeyed, holding each other's hand's as they did so.  
CRACK!  
The sharp leather cut deeply into their skin. Dawn howled with pain. Buffy was silent, knowing that to react in any way was to just encourage more punishment.  
"No, mom, please, please don't…" she begged silently in her mind.  
Buffy stared deeply into Dawn's eyes which seemed to say "At least we have each other" even through the pain.  
"Please, let that be all" Buffy begged under he breath, "Please let that be enough"  
"Say thank you to mommy girls" Joyce goaded.  
"Yes mommy" Buffy replied evenly.  
"SAY IT!" Joyce snapped.  
"Thank you mommy" Buffy replied.  
"T-thank you" Dawn stuttered.  
Drusilla sat in the corner, giggling helplessly.  
Joyce grabbed Dawn up in her arms and looked at her like a hawk at a scrap of meat. She smiled and vamped out.  
"Maybe I'll kill Dawn tonight?" she wondered.  
Dawn whimpered. Buffy looked blankly at her.  
"Or maybe I'll turn her? She always was my favourite" Joyce goaded her.  
"Oh God mom please, please don't do that!" Buffy broke down. Joyce and Drusilla smiled at having penetrated Buffy's stoic façade. Joyce bit deeply into Dawn's neck, draining her of blood in big greedy swallows, never taking her eyes of Buffy for a moment. Dawn was paralysed with fear. Buffy just wanted to die in that moment.  
She dropped Dawn to the floor. Then she collapsed on top of her.  
"Mummy?" Dru inquired.  
Joyce didn't reply.  
"Mummy are you alright?" she asked again.  
"Mom?" Buffy inquired, still concerned, still caring in spite of it all, stricken between helping Dawn or helping her mother .  
Joyce stood up. She looked at Dawn on the floor, barely conscious, bleeding from her neck wounds. She looked at Buffy standing anguished before her. She looked at Dru.  
Her punch sent Dru sprawling.  
She swept Dawn up in her arms. Dru picked herself up and advanced towards her, snarling.  
"Buffy!" Joyce implored. Dru smashed into the room's wall as Buffy gave her a flying kick. She raced outside, following Joyce as she bore Dawn in her arms.

"Please, please help her, she needs a doctor!"  
Giles took Dawn in his arms and wrapped her in his jacket before placing her in his car. He raced off towards the hospital burning rubber all the way.  
Xander gallantly gave Buffy his coat, Tara gave Joyce hers. Willow offered Joyce a goblet of oddly coloured liquid.  
"What is it?" she asked.  
"Mohra demon blood" she responded. "I already restored your soul. This will make you human again"  
Joyce snatched the cup from her and drank deeply, ignoring the awful taste.

The sound of the breaking mirror drew Buffy and Dawn to Joyce's room. Dawn left her bedroom door open, music from her stereo filling the house. Joyce was sitting on the bed, staring at the wall.  
"Mom, what is it?"  
Joyce didn't reply.  
They clustered around her.  
"Mom, what's wrong?"  
She remained silent.  
They put their arms around her. She wrenched them away. "Don't touch me! Girls, you must never touch me ever again!"  
They looked at her baffled.  
"Mom is your head ok?" Dawn voiced their concern.  
"My head's fine, Dawn. The doctors say my tumor has miraculously healed itself" she laughed at the preposterous irony of it.  
"Then what's wrong?"  
"What's wrong? What's wrong? I TORTURED you, that's what's wrong! I did such awful things to you both!" she turned away, "Don't look at me, please don't look at me!"  
Dawn and Buffy exchanged a glance. Buff went forwards and took Joyce around the waist, Joyce struggling futilely as the Slayer pulled her back to the bed. Dawn placed her arms around her mother's shoulders. Joyce closed her eyes and grimaced.  
Buffy took Joyce's head in her hands and made her open her eyes. She stared into them deeply.  
"I love this face. This face is my first memory, the first thing I remember in my life. I loved it from that very first moment, it was the first thing I ever loved. I will NEVER stop loving it"  
Joyce's tears came. "Oh Buffy…"  
Dawn took Joyce's hands in hers. "I love these hands. These are the hands that cradled me as a baby, made my birthday cake, stroked my hair and wrapped my Christmas presents. I don't care what they did to me, I love them, I will ALWAYS love them"  
Joyce shook her head. She ran her hands terribly gently up and down the whip marks on Dawn's back, still vivid. Buffy's Slayer healing took care of her injuries, her skin was flawless once again. But Dawn would always carry some faint scarring despite Willow's best efforts with her magic "Oh Dawnie, look what I did to you, you'll have these for the rest of your life…"  
"YOU GAVE ME LIFE!" Dawn was bawling her eyes out by now. "YOU GAVE ME EVERYTHING!"  
"We don't care what you did to us" Buffy explained, "All we care about is that we have you back, you're back with us mommy, promise us you'll never leave again, promise us"  
Joyce took them in her arms and clutched them to her. "I can't make that promise. One day I won't be here anymore…"  
"Mom don't say that!" Dawn objected. Buffy stayed silent, accepting what her mother was saying.  
"Oh Dawnie, that's the way of the world. Parents are supposed to die before their children, they just couldn't live with the heartache if they didn't. But by the time that happens I'll be old and grey and you'll have children of your own"  
She clutched their heads together and nuzzled her face into their soft and perfumed hair.  
"What did I ever do to deserve such wonderful girls?" she asked.  
Buffy and Dawn were silent. It didn't matter that they had no answer.  
The music from Dawn's stereo drifted softly through the house, the sound of The Bangles filling the air.  
"Close you eyes, give me your hand, baby,  
I can hear your heart beating, do you understand?  
Do you feel the same?  
Am I only dreaming?  
Or is this feeling, an eternal flame?"  
What mattered was that the Summers girls were together once more. And all three wished they would never part.


End file.
